Showing posts from February 2017

Our latest article has been published in the Chiswick Herald, click here or read below; this article looks at our take on how relationship counselling would have been useful in the musical La La Land.

Love and relationships in La La Land

SPOILER ALERT - If you have not yet seen La La Land you might want to read this article when you have!

In the final scene of La La Land, as Ryan Goslings’ character plays the piece on the piano that first captured Emma Stone’s characters attention, an alternate outcome flashes by where they get together and stay together.

The pivotal moment appears to be where instead of him roughly pushing past her, he instead stops and kisses her passionately. To me this suggested that if only he had acted differently in this moment, if only he hadn’t been so upset, then everything would have turned out differently? However putting my relationship therapist hat on, I would suggest a very different potential turning point in their relationship - one that if handled differently may well have led to a positive although maybe less dramatically satisfying outcome?

For me, the key moment in the film where I would expect the problems to have originated was where he overheard her speaking on the phone to her mother about their and his financial situation. He is seen looking at a damp patch on the ceiling and these things are shown just prior to him deciding to take on a new job. A job where it is clear is out of line with the way they had both been thinking and feeling until then. We can only imagine what he thought and how he might have felt hearing the situation and him discussed in hushed tones? And why was she speaking in this way we can also only wonder about whether she found it difficult to talk to him about this situation, there may have been a part of her that wanted him to overhear but also what she wanted him to understand? The most skilful thing for them to do at this point in time would have been to talk about something they were obviously finding difficult - so why didn’t that happen?

In therapy I would be wanting to understand how they both thought and felt at this point about the financial situation and to explore what they both understood about how the other was thinking and feeling? I would also want to know whether they talked together about making decisions that would impact on the relationship and to consider what had been talked about and what was not. For example, if he said that he had decided to take on this work how did she think and feel about questioning him about his reasoning? Likewise what were his thoughts and feelings about talking to her about what he saw as a problem and what he thought would be the best solution? So often partners will think or feel that talking might not be the best thing to do. They might think they should not question their partners decisions or might also not want to share for fear of burdening the partner.

They might think certain subject areas are out of bounds or they might not be expecting their partner to be interested in a particular problem. An added dimension here might be how they were both very passionate about wanting to make a success in their separate careers and also aware of each others career dreams. I would want to know how they felt and thought about challenging but also being challenged about the priority they might give to their careers at that point in time?

So often things do not get talked about because people are so focussed on doing things in what they think is the right way they forget that in a relationship the right way is actually about teamwork. There are no rights or wrongs only the need for the couple to feel comfortable in the relationship and to think that it works for them.

Maybe in La La Land if they had talked about the financial situation at this point different decisions would have been made? However in my opinion, it is not so much the decision itself that is crucial as the fact that both think and feel that they made it together. It is this that I think ensures even through the most difficult of times, both partners see their situation as the problem rather than their relationship or each other and it is this state of mind and belief in their relationship that ensures they can find the energy and motivation to work in harmony.